AFP Action’s Haley endorsement is too little, too late. We’re likely in for a 2016 rerun, with vain politicians again splintering the anti-Trump vote and handing him the GOP nomination.

The Iowa caucuses are seven weeks from today. While AFP Action says it will deploy “the largest grassroots operation in the country and a presence in all fifty states” behind Haley, it’s hard to imagine her beating Trump. It feels like another exercise in political delusion: a powerful mainstream Republican force pretending Trump doesn’t control the party.

There’s also deep irony here. As the major financial and political force behind the reactionary, anti-Obama Tea Party movement, AFP helped create Trump, the man it is now trying to defeat.